Voodoo Eyes (27 page)

‘Mr Pinel?’ The man nodded. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you at home. I got this address from your former office building.’

Pinel considered him from the quarter-opened door, a little bewildered but mostly curious.

‘Do you speak English?’ asked Max.

‘French, Spanish, Russian and German too. How many languages do you speak?’ Pinel’s voice was smoke-cured, deep and throaty, but he was smiling, already sure of the answer. His teeth made Max think of a strip of cheap leopard-skin print – yellow, black, with the odd dash of brown.

‘Just this one,’ he said.

‘What can I do for you?’

‘I’m looking for someone called Vanetta Brown.’

‘Vanetta?
Well, she’s not here.’ Pinel shrugged. There was no hostility or suspicion about him and he opened the door wider, suggesting he welcomed the company, even in the form of a complete stranger. Despite the aura of tragedy about the old man, Max had him down as one of life’s kidders, the sort who could be relied on to raise a laugh at a funeral.

‘I didn’t think she was.’ He showed Pinel the picture of Joe and Vanetta. Pinel took a pair of glasses out of his shirt pocket and scrutinised the photograph for a moment, his eyes scanning slowly left to right, and then left again, where they lingered. Max watched his face for a reaction but detected nothing.

‘Come in, Mr …?’

‘Mingus.’

‘Interesting name.’ Pinel looked at him anew.

‘My dad was a big jazz fan.’

Pinel stepped aside and let him in.

The interior was surprisingly cool and clean. It had a rustic theme, with wooden panelling on the ceiling and walls, grey flagstone flooring, a fireplace and thick oak doors leading to three rooms. The furniture was all antique – a matching couch and two easy chairs, glass-panelled bookcases with locks on the doors – and a tall brass floor lamp in each corner.

‘I’m making coffee. Can I offer you some?’

‘Is it Cuban coffee?’ asked Max.

‘No. French. I get it from Martinique. I go there sometimes. I have a French passport,’ he said. ‘You don’t like Cuban coffee?’

‘I find it weak. But then my idea of coffee’s something that’d cure a coma.’

‘Coffee in the Caribbean is generally not strong. Caffeine and hot climates don’t mix.’ Pinel led him to the kitchen, which was spotless and had a view of the street through its barred windows. On one wall was a large map of Cuba. The island resembled a bent nail, stood on its head. On another wall hung seven framed photographs in a single straight line. They were all the same, yet different – Pinel in a light-grey suit, white shirt and black tie, standing against a leafy backdrop, with a woman on his arm. The woman changed in each picture. They were all in bridal dresses. They got darker and younger as Pinel got older.

‘Where are you from, Mr Mingus?’

‘Miami.’

The old man motioned for Max to sit at the table by the window, a sturdy wooden thing draped in a blue vinyl covering.

‘La
Ciudad de gusanos.
City of worms. That’s what Castro calls it.’

‘We don’t like him much either.’

‘An understatement. When he fell ill, your people celebrated in the streets. And I read that they’ve got a huge party planned in the city stadium to celebrate his death. I find that disgusting.’

‘Feelings run high,’ said Max, looking at the map pinned to the wall in front of him.

‘Everyone has a hard-luck story.’ Pinel smiled and went to tend to the espresso pot rattling on the stove, the space between them gradually filling with the rich aroma of fresh coffee.

According to the morsels of information Max had gathered from the hotel internet earlier that morning, Antoine Pinel was the third of five children born to a wealthy Parisian industrialist, the sort of self-made man who’d expected his progeny to follow in his footsteps like wind-up replicas. Antoine had rebelled at an early age. At thirteen, he’d been expelled from a Jesuit-run school, for having sex with a cleaner; at fifteen, he joined the French Communist Party. Six years later, in 1957, he went to Cuba to fight for Castro. He was caught in Santa Clara with a suitcase full of pistols and ammunition and hand grenades. He was imprisoned, but freed several months later when the town was captured by rebel troops led by Che Guevara. He fought alongside Guevara and was among those who rolled into Havana on January 8, 1959. Pinel returned to Paris two years later and became involved in the movement for Algerian independence. He participated in the infamous riots of October 1961 – ‘The Paris Massacre’ – where two hundred people died at the hands of the police. Pinel was arrested and spent another eighteen months in prison. After his release, he returned to Cuba, where he’d lived on and off ever since, working as a translator for Castro and other regime bigwigs, as well as running a variety of publishing companies, which produced everything from official histories of the Cuban revolution to chick-lit.

‘How are you finding it so far, Cuba?’

‘It’s as I imagined it would be – but also … not really that way at all,’ said Max.

He nodded. ‘You’re confused. That’s how it always starts. Cuba changes the hardest heart.’

‘Is that what happened to you?’

‘My
heart was never hard. I’ve lived here forty years. I tried going back to France a few times, to see if I could live there again. But every time, I found something about my country had changed in a way that I didn’t like, that I could not understand. Here, nothing really changes. It just stops working. And then eventually, maybe, sometimes, it gets fixed and things go back to the way they were. I like that.’ Pinel took the gurgling coffee pot off the fire and brought it over to the table.

‘Cuba was America’s whore and then Russia’s mistress,’ Pinel said as he poured the coffee. ‘America fucked her, pimped her out to gangsters, took all she had to offer and paid her pennies. Russia kept her, in a certain style. But it couldn’t really afford her, and it was an old and largely impotent master. Then it died and left her with nothing. Now Cuba’s alone. She has some suitors, the ones who are in love with what she was, but not as she is now. Venezuela is passionate but its pockets aren’t as deep. China is interested, but it’s a long-distance affair, only occasionally consummated. And then there’s Canada and Spain, but they don’t want to annoy the original pimp, America, which still keeps its boots under her bed, in Guantánamo, waiting to start the whole cycle again.’

Pinel lit an all-white Cohiba cigarette, which smelled just like a cigar. ‘Forgive me for rambling. I don’t get a lot of visitors. May I ask what you want with Vanetta Brown?’

‘The man in the picture—’ Max began.

‘I forget his name …’

‘You knew him?’

‘I would not say that I knew him,’ Pinel said. ‘We met only three times.’

‘You met Joe? Joe Liston? This man?’ Max tapped the picture.

‘Yes. What is this about, Mr Mingus?’

‘I’m a friend of Joe’s.’

‘I remember he was a cop. Are you a cop, like him?’

‘I was. Thirty years ago. Joe was my partner back then. Now he’s dead. He died recently.’

‘That’s terrible.’ Pinel’s naturally downcast mien sagged a little more. ‘Was he ill?’

Max decided not to tell him the truth. ‘It was sudden.’

‘No suffering.’ Pinel nodded. ‘That is the best way. One minute here, next minute gone. I hope to die in my sleep, so I can’t tell the difference.’

‘When did you meet Joe?’

‘The first time was around eighty-seven, eighty-eight. The Russians were still here.’

A year before Max had gone to prison.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I met him again in 1994 or 1995, after I published her

book.’

‘Which book?’

‘The one she wrote.
Black Power in the Sunshine State.’

‘She
wrote that?’ Max frowned.

‘Under a pseudonym.’

‘Kimora Harrison?’

‘You have read it?’

‘Yes,’ said Max. ‘But it’s not an autobiography. It’s written in the third person.’

‘That was deliberate. She did not want to draw attention to herself. She had many enemies.’

‘You mean Dennis Peck’s family?’

Pinel nodded.

Max thought back to the book. It had been more about the Black Jacobins as an organisation – what they’d stood for and all the good they’d done in their short lifespan – than it had been about Vanetta Brown and the murder of Dennis Peck. That had only taken up a small part of a narrative more concerned with ideology and philanthropy than with clearing her name and rebutting the case against her.

‘Did she ever mention someone called Eldon Burns?’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ He nodded. ‘She hated him. She wished him dead. He led the raid on the Jacobin House, and she held him personally responsible for the death of her daughter and husband.’

‘Did she elaborate on that?’

‘No.’ Pinel stubbed his cigarette out in a glass ashtray. ‘But she often said that although it was wrong to wish ill on people, she hoped to live long enough to look into Eldon Burns’s dying eyes.’

‘His dying eyes? Those were her exact words?’

‘Yes.’ Pinel nodded.

‘So she talked about killing him?’

‘No, no. She is not a violent person. Or even a hateful one,’ said the old man. ‘She simply wanted to be the last person he saw before he died.’

Max thought about that for a moment, and filed it away.

‘What about Joe? What was he doing here?’

‘Didn’t he tell you?’ Pinel looked at him suspiciously.

‘He was a Miami cop,’ Max said. ‘He came here illegally. It would have been the end of his career if anyone found out. So, no, he didn’t tell me. He didn’t tell anyone. Not even his family. But he left instructions in the event of his death. I have a letter for Vanetta from him, to be delivered personally.’

‘What does it say?’

‘I don’t know. It’s sealed.’

‘You did not open it?’

‘Joe Liston will always be my friend.’

Pinel drank his coffee and met Max’s gaze, digesting the lie, assimilating it, buying it. Then he smiled and bared that wet leopard-skin sliver again. ‘Did you know he was a Black Jacobin?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think he was helping her with her book.’

‘How?’

‘Research. That’s what she told me. But I never asked the details. I was just interested in the finished work,’ said Pinel.

‘What about their relationship?’

Pinel frowned.

‘Were they friends or lovers?’ Max prompted.

‘I never had the impression they were lovers.’ Pinel smiled. ‘Veteran’s intuition.’

‘When was the last time you saw Joe?’

‘Before your nine-eleven, so … in 2000.’

‘What did you talk about, generally?’

Pinel took out another cigarette and tapped the end on the table. ‘Your friend was fascinated by this country, especially the relationship between Fidel Castro and the blacks here.

‘Castro made racial discrimination illegal when he came to power. One of the first things he did. Cuba was an equal opportunities country long before yours. Before Castro, blacks were second-class citizens. There was a saying then – “Si
tu ves un doctor negro, ese es el mejor doctor de Cuba”
– which means: “If you see a black doctor, that’s the best doctor in Cuba.” In other words, a black person had to work five times as hard as his white counterpart. Being only very good wasn’t an option. A black Cuban had to be the very best.

‘Three-quarters of Castro’s support for blacks was down to politics and ideology, the rest was personal. When he started the revolution in the mountains, most of his supporters were poor blacks. They sheltered the guerrillas, fed them and joined them. They formed a strong bond. They were against the same thing. Blacks were – and still are – Castro’s foundation. His base.’

‘Was that why he gave asylum to so many Black Panthers?’

‘In part, yes,’ said Pinel. ‘He knew they were criminals, of course. He is neither stupid nor naive. But at the time the Cold War was at its peak and granting left-wing black American fugitives sanctuary gave the imperialists across the water the finger.’

‘What about you and the Panthers? You published their autobiographies.’

‘Yes, regrettably,’ sighed Pinel.

‘Why “regrettably”?’

‘I had big ambitions. I thought I would find another George Jackson or Malcolm X. But, alas, no. Their stories were identical. Bad blaxploitation. The hero is the poor downtrodden black man, or woman. The villain is always ‘The Man’: white, racist and powerful. The hero is innocent of murdering the cop, the bank teller, the shopkeeper, yet he has to flee because he will never get a fair trial because The Man runs the justice system. And it always ends the same way – here, in Cuba. The hero becomes bitter and twisted. At first he is grateful just to be free, but then he has to live in this strange country with its secret police, its enforced poverty, its rationed food, its constant shortages, its lack of ghettos and freedom of speech. The hero gets confused. He is no longer a victim. He is in a country of victims.’ Pinel chuckled and blew smoke out through the window bars.

‘You sound contemptuous,’ said Max.

‘Ah, that I am. Working with those people broke me, forced me to retire. They thought their books were selling thousands, that I was ripping them off. In reality they barely sold. But what did they know or care? They didn’t believe me. I went from being “Frog Brother Number One” to “That Thieving White Devil”.’

He finished his coffee. Max sipped his. It was the best cup of coffee he’d had in Cuba and he didn’t expect to drink any better, so he was savouring it.

‘Vanetta was very different, of course.’ Pinel smiled. ‘She never mixed with her so-called brothers and sisters. In private, she despised them, considered them little more than common criminals who’d given the cause a bad name. She shunned their functions, their get-togethers. The feeling was mutual. As far as they were concerned, she was a killer, like all of them, and no better. They had a name for her: “Miss Shitdontstink”.’

‘Do you think she’s innocent – of killing Dennis Peck?’

‘We’re all capable of making terrible mistakes under pressure, but I believed her when she told me she was innocent.’